In 10 years, internet will be locked down. But unlike RF, which has been controlled by governments, internet will be controlled by private corporations.
Your entire post is VERY upsetting and pessimistic, yet I don't think you're wrong at all, except I'd add "and governments" at the end of the above sentence. Megaupload has been shut down. I've only now started appreciating the gravity of the situation. I guess I had too much faith in the technical resilience of the internet, but after reading promit's article, not anymore. Is this really the beginning of the end? Where do you guys see the internet in 10 years?
Your entire post is VERY upsetting and pessimistic, yet I don't think you're wrong at all, except I'd add "and governments" at the end of the above sentence. Megaupload has been shut down. I've only now started appreciating the gravity of the situation. I guess I had too much faith in the technical resilience of the internet, but after reading promit's article, not anymore. Is this really the beginning of the end? Where do you guys see the internet in 10 years?
To be fair, megavideo was HUGE for illegally streaming video content. I would much prefer them building a case this way and then shutting down websites over making laws that allow them to shut down websites at a whim.
It will be interesting to see how the case goes, because they don't put the content there, they just host it for others. It will be interesting to see the arguments made by both sides, because megavideo does actively police itself; despite policing itself much more slowly than youtube.
I was just about to point out if anyone tried to mention megaupload it would be really ignorant to be like "it wasn't primarily a copyright infringement tool". I don't want to throw out guesses, but I'd wager not less than 90% of the content was copyrighted. They have a pretty open and shut case if you read this.
unrelated to the content of the document, but does anybody else have the pet peeve of extremely long documents without tables of content? It's not like it would have been hard. If they would have written that in Word you could have done it with one button because it's already in a numerical-ish outline.
I mean really this is inevitable. The entire basis of the internet is freely communicating information. Movies, books, music, television, radio, news, software, video games, and magazines are all information. As long as the internet exists all forms of information will soon become unprofitable. However, when you put a price tag on information it greatly impedes the flow of information but making it freely available also makes the pursuit of information no longer profitable. It becomes a matter of quality vs. quantity. If information is freely available there will be far more of it but if information has a price tag it will probably be better quality. Obviously in the end you must find a balance. At the moment things are leaning towards quantity over quality due to the advent of the internet.
I spend a lot of money on Steam when I could just be using The Pirate Bay for free to get the same 'information'. The reason I choose to pay is probably in some part a moral one, but the main reason is that Stream is simply offering a better service than The Pirate Bay is -- finding what I want is quicker, the risk of viruses/malware is lower (besides steam itself, ha ha!), the download speeds are quicker and they bundle in other services like free VOIP/IM.
Piracy is just going to have to be a fact of life, and services like Steam are [s]going to live[/s] living fine alongside it.
megaupload is no worse than other file sharing services in terms of the legality of the shared content. It logically follows that rapidshare, mediafire, and the rest of the bunch will inevitably be put down next. Soon, there will be no more Pirate Bay, no more youtube videos that the government doesn't like, no more irc because there are chat bots there that send you anime episodes if your words are right, no more wiki leaks, ISPs will eventually ban torrent traffic, and there will be no place left for you to say or share anything without being closely monitored by god knows how many parties. Isn't that great?
I was just about to point out if anyone tried to mention megaupload it would be really ignorant to be like "it wasn't primarily a copyright infringement tool". I don't want to throw out guesses, but I'd wager not less than 90% of the content was copyrighted. They have a pretty open and shut case if you read this.
I started reading it, but it's so full of biased terminology that I couldn't take the argument seriously (anyone would think they were talking about the mafia...). It shouldn't matter what the proportion is, the key question is simply whether they responded to takedown notices. If they didn't, then fair enough - is this the case?
Consider that YouTube is one of the most visited sites on the Internet, and there's an awful lot of material that AFAICT seems to be used without permission, either direct copies, or derivative works.
SOPA is unconstitutional, but MIAA and RIAA and others don't care. Reasonable and legal alternatives like the OPEN Act are being rejected because the big corporate content creators want to be granted police powers so that they can decide what sites should be allowed to operate.
In our game studio, when our games were pirated, their sales dropped to zero (from about ten sales daily on average), because pirate sites occupy first spots on Google and other search engines. Our games used simple purchase schemes by using serial key and low prices ($10 or so), without any DRM and other limitations. Writing complaints to LiveJournal and other blog sites (which are used for distribution and providing links to pirated versions) were useless and completely ignored. Right now you don't need WarezCrawler or other sites to look for warez, just use Google! As a result, right now we are several developers, who all have Ph.D., work experience, publications and other achievements - all without a job, completely broke; been looking for a job for several months now without success (nobody seems to want to hire in the year of elections, economical crisis and reduced budget).
I think OPEN is a joke, another bureaucratic attempt where only those with huge connections, influence and power will be able to do something. The rest of us will still be helpless against multimillionaire piracy industry. SOPA and PIPA would be some alternatives, which could give us a chance against these pirate networks, although I'm not sure how well Indie developers would be protected by these acts.
Right now in many countries they can put anyone in jail for posting unpopular opinions about politicians on blogs and so on, but when they want to stop pirates, everyone screams of censorship. A$$holes always complain...
